The growing
availability of digital data and data technologies has led many civil society
groups, governments, and international organisations to talk of a “data revolution”. But what kinds
of political projects, models of citizenship and forms of action will such a
data revolution enable? And whom will it ultimately serve?

Following
debates about open government amongst political actors from the White House to
Wikileaks, you could be forgiven for thinking that the critical political
question around digital data generated by states is what information is
disclosed to whom.

Leakers,
hackers and whistleblowers transgress disclosure rules to bring caches of data
to the masses, arguing that the sunlight of public scrutiny should be allowed
to shine in on documents which were previously dark.

In parallel,
the concept of “open data” has gained significant traction amongst
transparency activists and amongst politicians in some of the world’s most
powerful nations. Advocates of open data often focus on how information is
released, arguing for legal and technical modes of disclosure which enable
everything from new kinds of computational analysis to glittering ecosystems of
web services and applications.

But a
politics of public information predominantly focused on the transparency,
disclosure and “opening up” of official information risks overlooking
several critical parts of the bigger picture – including what information is
generated, who uses it to what end, and how it organises collective life.

Drawing on a comparison between data and photography that I made in an article for the Guardian several years ago, the talk focused on the development of critical literacies for data. In particular it argued for going beyond literacies with datasets, towards literacies around data infrastructures as socio-technical systems – including looking at questions of what is measured and how.

One paper will argue for a broadening of the politics of public information from a focus on the disclosure of datasets to the reshaping of data infrastructures. Another will look at the use and potential of network analysis and network mapping in digital journalism. The last one will look at ongoing empirical work to map the politics of open data on digital media, concluding with some reflections on the value of digital methods for policy research. Abstracts for all three papers are copied below.

Today I’m giving a working paper exploring a politics of public information that goes beyond a focus on the disclosure of datasets and looks towards interventions into the data infrastructures through which they are produced.

I was invited to give a talk at a conference on the “Politics of Big Data” at King’s College London, which took place yesterday. I spoke about “Digital Transparency and the Politics of Open Data” and gave an overview of several ongoing research projects around these topics. The abstract for the talk was as follows, and the slides are included below.

In recent years the concept of open data has developed from being a niche idea at the margins of software development communities to playing a central role in global information policy. This paper draws on a combination of historical and empirical research to examine open data as a contested political concept that is continually reconfigured in response to shifting ideals, conceptions and practices of governance and democracy in different contexts. This includes work towards a “genealogy of open data”, as well as the findings from several research projects at the Digital Methods Initiative to map the politics of open data as an issue on digital media. It concludes with reflections on open data initiatives as sociotechnical assemblages and on emerging forms of intervention calling not just for the disclosure of information but for more fundamental changes in the composition of information infrastructures that organise collective life.

What might critical theory contribute to the study of digital media? And how might the study of digital media help to advance, complicate or challenge concepts, theories and agendas associated with critical theory, broadly conceived? These questions are central to two recent books by David Berry and Christian Fuchs, who both draw on the theoretical legacy of Frankfurt’s Institute for Social Research to analyse the social, economic, cultural, political implications of new kinds of information technologies.

The two books are set against the background of the accelerating and deepening entanglement of digital technologies and their accompanying concepts and practises with nearly all areas of human life, exemplified by phenomena such as ‘flash crashes’ caused by self-learning algorithms that trade with each other automatically, weaponised computer viruses capable of destroying military equipment, brain interfaces and ‘secondary memory’ devices, ubiquitous state and corporate surveillance, networked social and political movements, hyper-temporary digital jobs, gargantuan real-time data streams, drone assassinations, attention markets, 3D printed guns, darknets and megaleaks. Berry and Fuchs both argue for the continuing relevance of thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School (as well as their philosophical progenitors and progeny), whom have hitherto occupied a comparatively marginal position in new media studies, in understanding these developments.